Guild Wars 2

A couple of weeks ago I started getting a strange crash every time I played Guild Wars 2. Sometimes it happens immediately after starting up, sometimes it takes an hour. Very shortly after this started my RAM died, so I figured that was the problem. I ordered 8 gigs, got them installed, ran several memory checks to make sure everything was working properly, then played Guild Wars for about 3 hours with no problems.

Today I started playing and got the crash again. I rebooted, updated everything, and started the game up again. I managed to play for nearly an hour before it once again crashed.

I think I’m grasping at straws here, but I really hope it’s not my computer. I had to spend money I didn’t have to fix the RAM, and there’s no way I can fix anything else for a while.

I’ve attached a picture of the screen when it crashes. I get rainbow, flickering, horizontal lines across the screen and everything goes silent and freezes. I have to reboot to get it to do anything. The thing that makes me wonder if it’s the game is that the mouse cursor is unaffected, as you can see in the picture It is frozen, but the flashing lines don’t touch the mouse. It hovers over it.

Also, on a previous crash the options menu was split in two. The lower half was moved so that a button was under the mouse, and the button lit up as if I was hovering over the button with the cursor.

What do y’all think? I’m on an early 2011 Macbook Pro bootcamped to Windows 7 with 8 gigs of Ram and an intel hd 3000 graphics card. Right now I’m installing Guild Wars on the mac side to see if maybe the issue is with my install of Windows, in which case I can just reinstall that and be done with it.

I don’t do Macs, but that looks like a graphics problem, as in a bad video card.

Looking up your specs, there appears to be a defect with early 2011 macbooks involving the graphics chipset. Do you only have the integrated Intel GPU or do you also have a more powerful discrete AMD GPU? The problem seems to revolve around the logic board that switches between the two GPUs or overheating that causes damage to the board. If you only have the integrated GPU, it uses your system RAM, so bad RAM could be affecting it, but I’m guessing you’ve already ruled that out, assuming you did an actual RAM test with a program like memtest86.

I have the 13-inch macbook which only has an intel hd 3000 video card, no AMD. As far as the RAM goes, I did memtest and found that my RAM was shot, so I replaced it. The RAM I have now is brand new, and double what I had before so it should work even better. Still crashed, though.

I just installed Guild Wars on my Mac side, so I’ll play that tonight and see if it crashes again. If it doesn’t, then I’ll try a fresh install of Windows and go from there.

That’s a bad card/failing psu possibility

OP – Looks like your mac suffered from the overheating issue. Basically, the motherboard got to hot and your BGA chipset separated from the Motherboard, causing this issue.

the only fix it to get a new motherboard, or a new Mac, at this point.

the HD3000 is built INTO the CPU. so its highly doubtful replacing the CPU is going to fix this.

Update: I played half an hour of WvW this morning with no issues on the Mac Beta client. I loaded up the game when I got home from work and have had it running ever since. So far I’m up to an hour and a half with no further issues. My computer feels pretty toasty, too.

I know this isn’t definitive proof. Last time I ran it just fine for 3 hours only to have it crash 15 minutes in on the very next day. I am very hopeful that this means that the issue was not in my hardware but instead in my install of windows. So far I’ve never had it crash on my Mac side.

Thanks everyone for your help. If it crashes again I’ll take it in to the Genius Bar and get a quote on how much it’ll cost to fix. May be time to go back to a Windows computer. This broke graduate student can’t afford to use Apple if it’s this much trouble to fix and keep running after 3 years.

Hopefully, though, it was just the install and I can stay naive and loyal just a little while longer.